7 thoughts on “Off To Cleveland”

I am not a writer nor do I want to be. I much rather write software. However it was an Interesting link. It was going well until I hit this line:

“I sold my first novel in 2004, to an editor I’d never met, halfway across the world, on the strength of about sixty pages and an outline. That doesn’t happen very often. I don’t have an office wall papered with rejection slips (which many superb, successful, award-winning authors do), because I have never received one for my fiction.* I’m not trying to be egotistical, I’m just stating bare facts”

This to me means he has not fucking idea what he is talking about when it comes to true perseverance in the face of constant and consistent rejection. Sure he wrote for years and years and practiced, practiced, practiced. But he seems to never have faced rejection. The kind of rejection that can cause despair, doubt, fear and the desire to just quit.

In the few articles I have read form those who wish to share how hard the profession is it always seems to be that they are in some way the exception. They got lucky, someone “discovered” their stuff on the web, etc. I would like to read a story where some one really went through the ringer, practiced hard, worked hard at marketing themselves and/or went through many attempts before finally finding success. Someone share one of those links.

Jennifer Pelland is a good example of that kind of career. Starting from scratch, with no short cuts and no miracles, she’s got a well-received first novel and a respectable body of short fiction, including 2 Nebula nominees. http://www.jenniferpelland.com/bio.html

When my name made it on the cover of USA Today, a group in San Francisco, thought it would be funny to hold a similar contest—the “Writer with No Future Contest.”

To win, the author had to provide more rejection letters, by weight, than any other writer in the world—without ever having had a story published.

The winner of that contest provided hundreds of rejection letters. But he kept training, trying to develop writing skills. He was smart and determined. He went on to publish, to become a New York Times bestseller even. In fact, today he makes more money writing science fiction than perhaps any other writer alive. His name is Kevin J. Anderson, and with over a hundred novels published, he has had dozens of New York Times bestsellers.

Oof, that Scott Lynch link was some solid eating. It was a much-needed kick in the ass, though. Going from working hard in hopes of getting published to hoping hard to work at getting published is way easier than it should be.

@MineOnly, every novelist who “gets to the top,” so to speak, is an exception somewhere along the line. That’s how they got as popular as they are. “You have to be good to get lucky” applies quite well.

Comments are closed.

WHATEVER

Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietorAbout the site